Combine an emotionally charged problem like obesity with claims of natural and cheap supplement, easy solutions from herbs and you have a marketing dream come true.

A marketing dream and real solutions may not be and often are not the same thing.

You need to ask questions. Questions like this one:

How do herbal supplements cause weight loss?

Most herbal weight loss supplements work the illusion of weight loss rather than the real loss of fat.

1- Water loss through urination and undigested food loss through increased bowel movements is the basis for claims that you can lose several pounds in a week. It may be true, but the weight you lose is not fat.

Central nervous system stimulation speeds up your mental and sometimes physical activities. Think of cartoons characters who have had a cup or dozen too many caffeinated coffees. They talk a the speed of hundred miles an hour, and they run around the screen doing all kinds of calisthenics.

The increased mental speed makes you agitated without any fat loss benefits. If and only if you can direct the increased stimulation into increased physical activities you can burn sugar and fat storage.

3- Herbal supplements for weight loss that increase serotonin help in two ways. The first is that serotonin is a natural appetite suppressant because it makes you feel fuller. Serotonin also improves your mood and makes you feel better which in turn impacts emotional eating.

These are three major ways. There are other ways that an herbal supplement could help you lose weight. With a creative marketing team, you can combine them into infinite sales pitches.

You need to dig deeper and see how a supplement works and verify the research.

There is always a case that could be made to use nitric oxide supplements like xtreme no muscle builder. However, reducing food to a supplement pill is a mistake.

Foods contain so many known beneficial ingredients as well as many yet to be discovered nutrients that simply could not be commercially produced without either damaging some nutrient or leaving it behind.

And foods taste so much better than a supplement. Below are a few choices you can include in your bodybuilding diet and weight loss diet do help your body naturally produce its own nitric oxide.

Coco in pure raw dark chocolate seem to have a healing effect on the endothelium which is the inner lining of your blood vessels and help them signal the smooth muscles of your blood vessels to relax.

Would a ten percent coco milk chocolate with the rest make of fat and processed sugar help? You already know the answer is no.

Watermelon is another winner in the nitric oxide world for those who are not allergic to it.

Watermelon contains a non-essential amino acid citrulline that your body uses to make nitric oxide. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry shows that the flesh of red watermelons has more citrulline than yellow or orange variety. The rind contained the most citrulline.1

Weight loss programs designed for individuals less than 30 may not be appropriate for those of us over 40.

There is no news here, it is just common sense.

As we age, beginning around age 30, among other things our hormonal balances change. These change in hormones impacts anything from male pattern baldness, loss of muscle mass and the ability to get pregnant.

Specific solutions and programs may be required for these changes. Not everything has to be different to restore hormonal balance to restore muscle mass or create a Pregnancy Miracle.

Hormone levels begin to change, which affects the amount of weight we gain as well as the ease by which we lose it. Unfortunately, the weight loss industry has many unscrupulous individuals who would like us to believe that we can lose up to 75 pounds in 12 weeks!

Yeah, right.

In the United States today approximately 2 out of every three adults is now overweight. It’s not surprising then that the weight loss industry is thriving and is currently a multibillion-dollar business. Instead, the real question is why do so many people keep returning to weight loss programs that don’t work instead of doing what it does take to maintain a healthy weight?

Realistically, the answer lies in the attraction to the novelty of the new weight loss program and the desire for a quick fix. Today everyone wants it fast. We want fast cars, fast food and fast weight loss, all without the need to do any work.

Research and physicians support the fact that there is a traditional way to successfully lose weight whether you are less than 30 or over 40. The difference lies in the amount of energy it takes in order to lose the weight over 40 or to maintain an appropriate weights. There just is no easy fix that works.

There are several facts that we do know about weight-loss strategies for individuals who are over 40. First dieting alone, without any exercise, is very likely to be ineffective in the long term. Individuals will probably be able to lose five or 6 pounds but any diet without exercise will likely have you re-gaining pounds within the first couple of years. Researchers have also found that there is a greater chance that non-exercising dieters will end up weighing even more than they did before they began dieting.

This yo-yo weight effect is actually more detrimental to the health of the individual than maintaining an unhealthy weights to begin with.

The second fact that is important to understand for everyone is that in order to lose weight you consume fewer calories than you burn. This means that the number of calories you eat each day in the foods you consume must be less than the number of calories you burn each day doing your daily activities, exercise or just breathing. That difference can be as few as 200 calories per day but there must be a negative difference.

The greater the negative difference, the faster the amount of weight that will be lost in a shorter amount of time. Weight that is lost at a modest pace has a much better chance of staying off for good. The aim is to lose not more than a pound, possibly two, per week but never more.

A third fact that is the crux of the many weight-loss programs is the addition of behavioral support with either counselors or other diet participants. Even support over the Internet appears to be promising for short-term weight loss. In a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association published in 2008 researchers compared the effects of Internet weight-loss program alone versus the addition of behavioral counseling using e-mail as a provider for one year. They found that adding e-mail counseling to a basic weight-loss intervention program significantly improved weight loss and adults who are at risk for diabetes. 1

While it may be fun to try the newest diets used by celebrities in Hollywood or recommended by your closest friend the basic design of any weight loss program used to:

Change the way you think. You’re not dieting you are changing your eating habits for a lifetime.

Increase the amount of fruits and vegetables as well is raw foods in your diet which will decrease the amount of calories you consume and increase your perception of being full.

Add exercise to your program, even if it’s walking for 30 minutes every day. This will help you to get into a negative calorie burn, even if it’s only 200 calories each day, and will help you to maintain your weight loss in the long term.